Prosecutor answers Bennett motion

Anthony Bennett is pictured in an undated file photo. Bennett has been charged with abusing Carnel Chamberlaiin, whose burned body was found at the home Bennett shared with the boy and Carnel's mother at 7340 E. Tomah Road.

An Isabella County man accused of killing a 4-year-old boy last year should stand trial despite his attorney trying to get a murder charge dropped, a prosecutor said.

In his response to John Shea’s motion asking for U.S. District Judge Thomas L. Ludington to drop the murder charge against Anthony Bennett, Assistant U.S. attorneys Roy Kranz and Craig F. Wininger argued that federal murder law prohibits the unlawful killing of another “with malice aforethought.”

Bennett, 21, of Chippewa Township is awaiting trial in federal court in Bay City for the June 21, 2012 murder of Carnel Chamberlain in the home Bennett shared with the boy’s mother, Jaimee Chamberlain.

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A hearing on the defense motion is set to be argued Nov. 18 at 9:30 a.m. in Ludington’s Bay City courtroom.

In their response to defense attorney John Shea’s motion, Kranz and Wininger said Shea’s assertion that the element of malice aforethought is not applied to felony murder is incorrect.

They also challenged a defense claim that the grand jury indictment against Bennett was vague.

“Murder in all its forms – premeditated murder, second-degree murder, felony murder and ‘misdemeanor murder’ – requires malice aforethought,” the prosecutors said in their response. “Malice, however, does not require proof of an intent to kill.

“Instead, malice aforethought includes ‘the state of mind with which one intentionally commits a wrongful act without legal justification or excuse.”

Kranz and Wininger said in that malice aforethought “is proved by the commission of the felony, there is no actual intent requirement with respect to the homicide.”

Malice aforethought can be proven if the defendant kills a person while committing a felony, the prosecutors said.

Intent to assault a child “when the assault is committed as part of a practice or pattern of assaults on a child, supplies malice to ‘misdemeanor murder,’” the prosecutors said.

A 2003 amendment to the federal murder statute added assault of a child “which, when intentionally committed and coupled with other assaults, demonstrates malice aforethought,” the prosecutors said.

Shea, who practices in Ann Arbor, said in his earlier motion seeking dismissal of the murder charge that the federal murder statute is vague, but Kranz and Wininger argued in their response that when the assault of a child results in death, first-degree murder has been established.

Shea also argued in his motion that the law is vague because “it does not adequately define or limit the relationship required to establish a ‘pattern or practice of assault ... against a child.’”

Kranz and Wininger said the law clearly defines the element specifically and in plain terms.

“The term ‘pattern or practice of assault or torture’ means assault or torture engaged in on at least two occasions,” the prosecutors said. “Thus, when the killing of a child is carried out as a part of multiple incidents or assault against a child, it is first-degree murder.”